The new report identifies and profiles 88 a.is. and analyses the success or failure of the generic sector to penetrate the market. (This report does not profile the older a.is. with patents expiring pre-2000 such as 2,4-D, glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, glufosinate etc.
Section 1: Post-patent defence strategies
This report analyses the post-patent defence strategies employed by inventor companies for each, a.i. and how successful these have been in defending the market.
In order to analyse how successful the inventor company has been in retaining market share each a.i. profile looks at the strategies employed by the patent holder to protect market share and includes:-
• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) - patent term extension and supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) • Mixture product strategy • Registrations - data protection issues • Marketing – licensing strategies • Existence of other non-crop markets
This report therefore identifies where the opportunities are for the generic sector to gain further market share and how vulnerable the inventor company is to generic competition.
With a total market value of US $21 billion the major sectors are:-
• Fungicides total sales of US $8.8 billion. • Herbicides total sales of US $6 billion. • Insecticides total sales of US $5.8 billion.
Throughout this study, the importance of mixture products in defending a market from generics is frequently demonstrated and highlights how important the granting of patents for many of these mixtures has helped the inventor companies maintain such a high % market share.
The off-patent/generic sector of the US $60 billion agrochemical crop protection industry has been growing in relative terms, however, much of this is still controlled by the inventor companies and in our analysis of each a.i. we look at the importance of IPR, especially IPR for mixture products, licensing deals and data protection rights provided by registration systems in post-patent defence strategies.
Section 2: Profiles of 88 active ingredients
Each profile includes:
• EU and/or US patent number
• EU patent expiry date (confirmation of SPCs for the active ingredient and mixture products)
• Global sales at farm level of a.i. (including mixture products)
• Global sales of inventor company
• Global sales of major licensee companies
• % share of market taken by generic competition
• Major commercial development milestones pre-patent expiry
• Major commercial development milestones post-patent expiry
• Major crops
• Major markets
• Major mixture products
• Listed manufacturers of the a.i.
• Analysis of where the major opportunities are for generic competition.